The bilingual oeuvre in translation: the example of Samuel Beckett’s Fin de Partie/Endgame in Dutch

Smeyers, Elies
(2015) “TRANSLAUTHORS”. Interrogating Writing from Translation. Intertwined Perspectives on Literature and Cultural Exchange from the XVIth to the XXIst Century / Questions de traduction à l’écriture. Regards croisés sur la littérature et les échanges culturels entre le XVIe et le XXIe siècles. International Conference — Location: Louvain-la-Neuve, UCL (10.September.2015)

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  • Smeyers, Eliesorcid-logoUCLouvain
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The concepts 'original' vs 'translation', 'source-' vs 'target-culture', 'domestication' vs 'foreignization', 'hypo-' vs 'hypertext' are inextricably connected with translation studies. Nevertheless, this fundamentally binary perspective reduces the actual complexity of the act of translation and gives a hierarchical image of the relationship between the translator, the author and the text(s). The translator's work is however necessarily creative and as a mediating figure between languages and cultures, he/she cannot be placed within one strictly delineated cultural space. In this context, the phenomenon of self-translation can be seen as an extreme instance of 'unclassifiability'; the translation is written by the author. Samuel Beckett is undoubtedly one of the most famous and most studied self-translators. Especially the status of the 'bilingual' work, the mutual relations between the two versions (e.g. Fitch 1988, McGuire 1990, Cerrato 2006), and the concrete translational choices of the self-translator (e.g. Butler 1994) have been extensively studied. Much less attention has been paid to the translation of that 'double' oeuvre into a third language, by a translator who is not the author (some exceptions are Montini 2006/2007, Sabljo 2011, Van Hulle 2009). This question is however strongly connected with the status attributed to the self-translated text. In any case, the 'second-hand' translator has to be aware of the fact that two authorized versions should be taken into account. From this, the following questions ensue: should we start from one source-text or does the 'double' oeuvre invite us to surpass this binary perspective? Is an 'eclectic' translation emanating from two 'source-texts' enriching or corrupting? Or does the 'double' oeuvre require a 'double' translation? Taking into account the complexity of Beckett's oeuvre, we will illustrate the difficulties with which the (Dutch) 'second-hand' translator is actually confronted – based on the comparison of a former Dutch translation (by Jacoba van Velde, 1966) with our own translation of a fragment from Fin de Partie/Endgame. Theoretical principles seem often irreconcilable with their practical applicability. Nonetheless, without pretending to provide one all-encompassing solution, it will be our aim to compare different possibilities of literary translation praxis with a view to reconciling theoretical considerations with practical experience.
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Smeyers, E. (2015). The bilingual oeuvre in translation: the example of Samuel Beckett’s Fin de Partie/Endgame in Dutch. “TRANSLAUTHORS”. Interrogating Writing from Translation. Intertwined Perspectives on Literature and Cultural Exchange from the XVIth to the XXIst Century / Questions de traduction à l’écriture. Regards croisés sur la littérature et les échanges culturels entre le XVIe et le XXIe siècles. International Conference, Louvain-la-Neuve, UCL. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/189807